It has long been known to provide corduroy roadways for use in constructing temporary roadway sections over marshy uneven ground, to thereby provide access for light vehicles, such as quads, to sites such as an oil drilling site, by laying logs in side-by-side array over the marshy ground. However this is time-consuming and expensive to do and requires the availability of properly sized lumber.
It is also known in the oil industry to provide large access mats that involve welded-together, rectangular frames formed from steel I-beams. The openings between the I-beams are filled in with squared logs. The mats are connected together with slot and key interlocks, to form roadways capable of supporting heavy vehicles. However these mats normally need to be laid on a graded surface. They are installed using heavy construction machines. And they are expensive to construct and install.
There remains a need for mats which can be used to form a manually constructed roadway which can be laid on uneven, non-graded, rough ground which may have short muskeg or bog sections and low spots. The present invention addresses this need.